Between August and October 1944, during and immediately after the Warsaw Uprising, German military and police units expelled almost 550,000 Warsaw residents and approximately 100,000 residents of the surrounding towns from their homes. The large majority of those expelled were sent to transit camps on the outskirts of Warsaw, mainly to Dulag 121 in Pruszków. From there, nearly 150,000 people were transported to forced labor camps deep within the Third Reich or to German concentration camps. The remaining displaced persons – mostly elderly people, women, and children – were resettled to the western districts of the General Government and left there without any means of subsistence.
Hitler's extermination order and its revocation
Warsaw was considered by the German occupiers as the center of Polish resistance against the Nazi "new order." Although the capital of Poland was demoted to the status of a provincial town in the General Government, Warsaw remained the center of Polish political, intellectual, and cultural life. It was also the seat of the Polish Underground State and the location of particularly strong and well-organized resistance structures. In this situation, the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising on 1 August 1944 was treated by Nazi leaders as an ideal opportunity to solve the "Polish problem." Upon learning of the uprising, Hitler gave Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and the Chief of the General Staff of the Oberkommando des Heeres, General Heinz Guderian, a verbal order to raze Warsaw to the ground and murder all its inhabitants. According to the account of SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who was appointed commander of the forces assigned to suppress the uprising, the order was: "every inhabitant is to be killed, no prisoners are to be taken. Warsaw is to be razed to the ground, thus setting a terrifying example for the whole of Europe".
From the first days of August 1944, Hitler's order was consistently carried out. In the Wola district, SS and German police units committed the massacre of the Polish population, killing approximately 65,000 men, women, and children in a matter of days.
On the afternoon of 5 August, SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach arrived in Wola and took command of the forces assigned to suppress the uprising. On the same day, Bach – presumably with the knowledge and consent of Nazi leadership – revoked Hitler's extermination order. He prohibited the killing of women and children, but upheld the order to liquidate all Polish men – both insurgents taken prisoner and civilians. This decision was based not so much on humanitarian motives as on pragmatic calculations. Bach quickly realized that mass murders only strengthened the Poles' will to resist, and that German soldiers, busy with murder, rape, and looting, were unable to conduct offensive operations against the insurgents. Moreover, from the very beginning, he intended to suppress the uprising through a combination of political and military means, as he feared that the use of purely forceful solutions would prevent him from achieving his main goal – the quick elimination of the dangerous flashpoint on the rear of the Eastern Front, which Warsaw, engulfed in the uprising, had become. On 12 August, Bach further softened Hitler's order by issuing a ban on the killing of Polish civilian men. In addition to the reasons mentioned above, economic considerations were also taken into account at that time. At this stage of the war, the Third Reich could not afford to waste such a large reservoir of potential labor. SS-Oberführer Paul Otto Geibel, the SS and Police Leader (SS- und Polizeiführer) for the Warsaw District, testified after the war that in the first days of August 1944, Bach quoted Hitler's words to him: "500,000 workers in the Reich equals a battle won".
Under the new guidelines, the civilian population of Warsaw was to be gathered in a transit camp (Durchgangslager 121), which was established on the premises of the disused Railway Rolling Stock Repair Works in Pruszków near Warsaw. After a short stay in the Pruszków camp, those fit for work were to be sent to farms, industrial plants, and camps within the Reich. Himmler's order of 8 September 1944 specified that "only those men who actively fought, or those who should be classified as such, should be sent to concentration camps. All those who surrendered voluntarily with their wives and children should be sent to Germany for normal employment". In practice, however, these rules were often interpreted to the detriment of the displaced people. Among other things, at the end of August 1944, the head of the Reich Security Main Office, SS-Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner, recommended to the command of Army Group Centre that, due to "serious considerations of police security", the bulk of able-bodied men and women from Warsaw be sent to work in concentration camps. Only women with small children could be treated as Polish civilian workers and placed at the disposal of the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment. Under this order, many residents of the Old Town, which was being captured at that time, were sent to concentration camps.
Expulsion of the capital's inhabitants
The exodus of Warsaw's population began essentially from the first days of the uprising. Warsaw residents living in German-controlled districts of the city were forced to leave their homes. Contrary to official assurances that the purpose of the displacement was solely to ensure the safety of civilians by removing them from the front line, the Germans were only interested in using the displaced people as slave labor and in looting and destroying the city itself. At the same time, as long as the German cordon surrounding the city was not too tight, thousands of Warsaw residents tried to leave the battle-engulfed city on their own. Among others, many residents of Koło, Żoliborz, and managed to take refuge in the Kampinos Forest. It also happened that the capital's population, driven to the brink of exhaustion by constant bombing and the harsh living conditions in insurgent Warsaw, voluntarily crossed over to the enemy lines. Between 7 and 10 September 1944, for instance, between 10,000 (Polish sources) and 30,000 (German sources) residents of Śródmieście crossed over to the German side. On 26 September, almost 9,000 civilians left Mokotów in a similar manner.
The expulsion of Warsaw's residents took place in stages and depended on the situation on the insurgent fronts. The course of the displacement can be traced, among other things, on the basis of the chronology of transports to the transit camp in Pruszków:
7–8 August: from Wola; 9–14 August: from Ochota; 22 August: from Sielce and Mokotów; 24 August: from the area of Krakowskie Przedmieście; 31 August–5 September: from the Old Town; 2–3 September: from Sadyba; 5–9 September: from Powiśle; 12–17 September: from Bielany and Marymont; 14–23 September: from Powiśle Czerniakowskie; 25–28 September: from Upper Mokotów; 28 September–1 October: from Żoliborz; 2–10 October: from Śródmieście.
When fighting on the Eastern Front temporarily ceased, the Germans also began the systematic deportation of the population from the right-bank districts of Praga not affected by the uprising, starting with Gocławek and Grochów. The deportations began before 15 August 1944, intensified from 20 August, and lasted until 9 September. Initially, they affected men between the ages of 16 and 60, and in the final phase, also women under 45 without small children. It is difficult to discern any pattern in the transport of people from Praga – in general, they were sent to the Reich for forced labor, although there were also deportations to concentration camps, especially in the case of transports from the so-called .
The population of the areas closest to Warsaw was also subject to expulsion – Anin, Babice, Bemowo, Boernerowo, Jelonki, Kobyłka, Łomianki, , Tłuszcz, Ursus, Wawer, Wawrzyszew, Włochy, and Zielonka – which was related to the implementation of a plan to reduce the Polish population within a 35-kilometer radius of Warsaw. The main aim of this operation was to capture the inhabitants of the capital who, after fleeing the city, sought refuge in the surrounding towns. German plans envisaged dividing the Warsaw District into three zones:
the first, encompassing Warsaw, was to be completely evacuated; the second, encompassing the towns around Warsaw, was to be partially evacuated (the intention was to displace all residents of the Warsaw suburbs who had arrived there after 1 August 1944); the third, encompassing the entire territory of the district, was subject to a plan to reduce the immigrant population by gradually sending men and women capable of work to Germany for labor.
During the uprising, the expulsion of Warsaw's residents usually followed the same pattern. In the districts that had been taken over, the Germans and their Eastern collaborators drove civilians out of shelters or residential buildings, usually accompanied by beatings, shouting, and the looting of all valuable personal belongings. Residents were given no more than a few minutes to leave the building, allowing them to take only enough luggage that would not hinder their march to the camp in Pruszków. Those who resisted, slowed the march (due to age or health), or simply offended the escort soldiers in some way were killed on the spot. There were also numerous cases of rape of women. Those residents of the capital who, trusting German promises, voluntarily crossed the front line were treated in the same manner.
Captured civilians were first taken to makeshift transit camps and assembly points still located within Warsaw. There, an initial "selection" of the displaced was carried out and transports to Pruszków or other transit camps were organized. The people gathered at the assembly points were held in extremely harsh conditions and treated with great brutality. There was a lack of food, water, and medical assistance, and the displaced were constantly exposed to harassment and looting by the guards. Numerous murders, deaths from wounds, illness, and exhaustion, as well as rapes, occurred. There were also frequent cases of detained civilians being used as "human shields" or being forced to work on dismantling barricades, building fortifications, or cleaning streets. Detainees were sometimes treated as hostages and murdered in retaliation for the deaths of German soldiers killed in battle against the insurgents. The fate of the people held in the Church of St. Stanislaus (commonly known at the time as the Church of St. Adalbert) in Wola and at the Zieleniak vegetable market in Ochota became particularly symbolic. During the uprising, almost 90,000 people passed through the Church of St. Adalbert, and approximately 60,000 through Zieleniak.
The following locations also became assembly points for the expelled residents of the capital:
the Stauferkaserne and Flakkaserne barracks in Mokotów; the horse racing track in Służewiec; the Gestapo headquarters on Szuch Avenue, the National Museum, and the complex of the University of Warsaw (Śródmieście); the Central Institute of Physical Education in Bielany; the area near Moczydło (between Natolin and Pyry); a "sawmill/carpentry workshop" in Okęcie; the barracks on in Praga.